Ben Allen: Difference between revisions

Jump to navigation Jump to search

Ben Allen (view source)

Revision as of 14:48, 9 March 2022

2,363 bytes added ,  9 March 2022
m
→‎About
(29 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown)
Line 2: Line 2:
| first name = Ben
| first name = Ben
| last name = Allen  
| last name = Allen  
| picturefile = Ben_square.jpg
| picturefile = BenAllenBlue.jpeg
| picturesize = 200px
| picturesize = 200px
| active from = 2019
| active from = 2019
Line 8: Line 8:
| positions = Deputy Technical Director
| positions = Deputy Technical Director
| current location = The YSTV Studio. Definitely.
| current location = The YSTV Studio. Definitely.
| degrees = BEng Electronic Engineering with Music Technology Systems
| degrees = MEng Electronic Engineering with Music Technology Systems
}}
}}
=About=
=About=
Ben Allen, can often found in the studio in the early hours of the morning, screaming at technology, and is a prime example of a dedicated YSTV member. He is an all round lovely guy and is almost constantly busy and tired.  
Ben (npm install *) Allen, can often found in the studio in the early hours of the morning, screaming at technology, and is a prime example of a dedicated YSTV member. He is an all round lovely guy and is almost constantly busy and tired.  


Joining as a fresher during the Give It A Go event in October 2019, Ben almost immediately became heavily involved in YSTV with his first event being a week or two later when YSTV hosted the 2019 NASTA People's choice awards. Acting as technical assistant to [[Technical Director]] [[Andrew Waddle]] during the setup and operation of the show. Having since worked on numerous live and recorded projects, Ben has worked within a variety of technical and operational roles; generally acting as technical and computing assistant to [[Andrew Waddle]] and [[Rhys Milling]] on live shows or working like a bugger with VFX. Not to mention his round the clock commitment to technical [[fuckary]].  
Joining as a fresher during the Give It A Go event in October 2019, Ben almost immediately became heavily involved in YSTV with his first event being a week or two later when YSTV hosted the 2019 NASTA People's choice awards. Acting as technical assistant to [[Technical Director]] [[Andrew Waddle]] during the setup and operation of the show. Having since worked on numerous live and recorded projects, Ben has worked within a variety of technical and operational roles; generally acting as technical and computing assistant to [[Andrew Waddle]] and [[Rhys Milling]] on live shows or working like a bugger with VFX. Not to mention his round the clock commitment to technical [[fuckary]].  
Line 18: Line 19:
* [[Marty]] Ben's software video switching project which acts as either a 3rd OB unit or a replacement for other server failures.
* [[Marty]] Ben's software video switching project which acts as either a 3rd OB unit or a replacement for other server failures.
* [[Election Results Night 2020]]
* [[Election Results Night 2020]]
Has a dark and mysterious alternate life (that must never be spoken of) at University Radio York including the positions:
*Assistant Head of Computing (2019-20)
*Station Manager of URY (2020-21)
*Assistant Head of Audio Resources (2021)
*Chief Engineer (2021-22)


=Trivia=
=Trivia=
*Can be calmed down with a Snickers bar.
*Can be calmed down with a Snickers bar.
*His favourite film is Sharknado, which he once called 'a cinematic masterpiece with an almost ethereal quality'.
*His favourite film is Sharknado, which he once called 'a cinematic masterpiece with an almost ethereal quality'.
*Snack of choice probably a Pot noodle or Dominos pizza
*Snack of choice probably a Dominos pizza.
*When in power-saving mode will only diet on breadsticks.
*100% fail-rate on setting up a dual boot first time.
*100% success-rate for eduroam setup.


=Productions/Projects=
=Productions/Projects=
'''YEAR 1'''
==Productions/Design==
'''YEAR 1 (2019-20)'''
{| class="wikitable" style="width: 100%;"
{| class="wikitable" style="width: 100%;"
| scope="col" | #
| scope="col" | #
Line 80: Line 91:
| [[Boxing Fight Night Live 2019]]
| [[Boxing Fight Night Live 2019]]
| Graphics Programmer
| Graphics Programmer
| Realised from Volleyball that roughly thrown together Visual Basic, no modularity and constant rewriting didn't make for a good graphics client. Had a better idea, got Marks Polakovs to kindly teach him React over one VERY long night. Rewrote the previous client in React. Came up with initial planning for the Ghostbuster Graphics system. The new Electron-based client ended up being named Luigi's Mansion 2 which was deployed successfully after 20 minutes of testing as Ben could not attend the event. After someone decided to play the maracas with the one validated OB unit, was phoned by Rhys and required to rush home in the car and remotely setup the other OB unit while Rhys was fixing the initial one. The backup unit was not needed in the end.
| Realised from Volleyball that roughly thrown together Visual Basic, no modularity and constant rewriting didn't make for a good graphics client. Had a better idea, got Marks Polakovs to kindly teach him React over one VERY long night. Rewrote the previous client in React. Came up with initial planning for the Ghostbuster Graphics system. The new Electron-based client ended up being named Luigi's Mansion 2 which was deployed successfully after 20 minutes of testing as Ben could not attend the event. After someone decided to play the maracas with the one validated OB unit, so was then phoned by Rhys and required to rush home in the car and remotely setup the other OB unit while Rhys was fixing the initial one. The backup unit was not needed in the end.
|-
|-
| scope="row"| 10
| scope="row"| 10
Line 95: Line 106:
| [[Please Sir, There's Been a Murder]]
| [[Please Sir, There's Been a Murder]]
| Sound Operator, Livestream Technician
| Sound Operator, Livestream Technician
| Learned the value of sleep, stared at clocks for hours testing latency, started to strongly dislike the Facebook live-streaming platform. The broadcast stream ended up being a bit unstable due to a sleep-deprived misconfiguration error causing our transcodes to stop crying. 'Solved' at the time by [[Andrew Waddle | Andrew]] monitoring stream health and Ben appropriately spamming ssh commands with forehead while sound mixing.
| Learned the value of sleep, stared at clocks for hours testing latency, started to strongly dislike the Facebook live-streaming platform. The broadcast stream ended up being a bit unstable due to a sleep-deprived misconfiguration error causing our transcodes to start crying. 'Solved' at the time by [[Andrew Waddle | Andrew]] monitoring stream health and Ben appropriately spamming ssh commands with forehead while sound mixing.
|-
|-
| scope="row"|  
| scope="row"|  
Line 105: Line 116:
| [[Election Results Night 2020|60 Second Manifestos 2020]]
| [[Election Results Night 2020|60 Second Manifestos 2020]]
| Director, Camera Operator, Editor & Graphics
| Director, Camera Operator, Editor & Graphics
| [[Cal Cooke | Cal]] and [[Thomas Schubert | Tom]] assisted with shooting the 30 candidates with lighting expertise from [[Andrew Waddle | Andrew]]. After Effects used for animating the YUSU assets. Used DaVinci Resolve and Nvenc for fast chroma-keying and exports with Edit 3's GPU being fully leveraged, along with some bodging to refine the graphics to never need to be re-rendered from the original comp speeding the process up greatly. Had fun shouting at EncodeSrv as it would misidentify the file's resolution when uploading to the website and transcoding. Ended up throwing files through Adobe Media Encoder as an easy fix. A fake manifesto from Ben may exist somewhere for pipeline testing purposes, this cannot be confirmed.
| [[Cal Cooke | Cal]] and [[Thomas Schubert | Tom]] assisted with shooting the 30 candidates with lighting expertise from [[Andrew Waddle | Andrew]]. After Effects used for animating the YUSU assets. Used DaVinci Resolve and Nvenc for fast chroma-keying and exports with Edit 3's GPU being fully leveraged, along with some bodging to refine the graphics to never need to be re-rendered from the original comp speeding the process up greatly (averaging 5 minutes editing per video with 1 minute final renders). Had fun shouting at EncodeSrv as it would misidentify the file's resolution when uploading to the website and transcoding. Ended up throwing files through Adobe Media Encoder as an easy fix. A fake manifesto from Ben may exist somewhere for pipeline testing purposes, this cannot be confirmed.
|-
|-
| scope="row"| 14
| scope="row"| 14
Line 130: Line 141:
| [[Ben Goes to Kuda- livestream]]
| [[Ben Goes to Kuda- livestream]]
| Director & Producer
| Director & Producer
| Missed a bus into town, got bored, started streaming to the site from Ben's phone with some basic graphics intermittently through the night, much confusion occurred from the members still in Courtyard.
| Missed a bus into town, got bored, started streaming to the YSTV website from Ben's phone with some basic graphics. Continued the stream intermittently through the night, much confusion occurred from the members still in Courtyard.
|-
|-
| scope="row"|  
| scope="row"|  
| '''Summer Term'''
| '''Summer Term (The year of 'rona)'''
|
|
|  
|  
Line 145: Line 156:
| YSTV Rebranding 2020
| YSTV Rebranding 2020
| Co-designer
| Co-designer
| Finished adapting designs by [[Edwin Barnes]] with [[Joe Radford]] to create a complete branding package for all of YSTV's productions.
| Finished adapting designs by [[Edwin Barnes]] with [[Joe Radford]] and [[Rhys Milling]] to create a complete branding package for all of YSTV's productions.
|}
 
'''YEAR 2 (2020-21)'''
{| class="wikitable" style="width: 100%;"
| scope="col" | #
! scope="col" | Show
! scope="col" | Position
! scope="col" | Notes (Personal and Technical)
|-
| scope="row"|
| '''Autumn Term'''
|
|-
| scope="row"| 1
| Forest Review Livestream
| Director & Producer
| Much the same kind of stupidity as the Kuda one, but in the Forest during a freshers intro meeting. Why? Good question.
|-
| scope="row"| 2
| Freshers Stream 2020
| Motion Graphics Designer
|
|-
| scope="row"| 3
| Oranges & Lemons Episode 1 - Morphsuit Man Pumpkin Carving
| Narrator, Editor & Graphics
|
|-
| scope="row"| 4
| University Challenge Team Selection Finals
| Graphic Design
|
|-
| scope="row"|
| '''Spring Term'''
|
|
|-
| scope="row"| 5
| YSTV E-Sports Rocket League
| Participant
|
|-
| scope="row"| 6
| [[Elections 2021|60 Second Manifestos]]
| Graphics/Thumbnails
| YSTV’s first use of Remotion framework to automatically generate all thumbnails based off json data and render React webpages as images.
|-
| scope="row"| 7
| [[Elections 2021|Debate Night]]
| Technical Assistant
|
|-
| scope="row"| 8
| YSTV Arts and Crafts
| Logo Design
|
|-
| scope="row"| 9
| [[Elections 2021|Election Results Night 2021]]
| Director, Vision Mixer, Graphics & Technical Assistant
| YSTV’s first use of SRT in production for the host’s video feed.
|-
| scope="row"|
| '''Summer Term'''
|
|
|-
| scope="row"| 10
| [[Roses 2021]]
| Production Architecture Lead & Graphics Lead
|
|-
|}
|}
==Technical==
(This needs to be sorted as complete vs work in progress)
*Ghostbuster
*site-2020
*streaming pipeline
*pushing for vmix
*marty
*Atem Tally lights
*edit3
*cobra
*boa
*asp
*DAPIA
*roses graphics trials
*unreal engine graphics
*Vmix adoption
*edit1&2 rebuilds


=Technical Shenanigans=
=Technical Shenanigans=
Retrieved from ‘https://wiki.ystv.co.uk/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/14884...15851’

Navigation menu